


gently, gently

by fuzzyfalcons18



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: aka heloise takes revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:34:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29382834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzyfalcons18/pseuds/fuzzyfalcons18
Summary: Blatantly based off "Lamb to the Slaughter''
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	gently, gently

The room is warm and clean, curtains drawn, two candles near her and the one by the empty chair opposite. On the little table behind her, two tall glasses, Water. Whiskey. 

Heloise, who is waiting for her husband to come home from business.

Now and then, glancing up at the clock, but without anxiety, merely to displease herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time when he would come. Something like touching a bruise knowing it would hurt, but doing it anyways. There was a slow suspicious air about her, and about everything she did. The drop of a head as she bent over her sewing was curiously tranquil. Her skin(for this was her sixth month with child) had acquired a pale, almost translucent quality, the mouth was even softer, and the eyes, with their new placid look, seemed larger and even brighter than before, if such a thing could ever be possible.

The clock heralds ten minutes to five. She begins to listen.

A few moments later, punctually as always, she hears wheels screaming on the gravel outside, and the door of the carriage, the footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock. She gently lays aside her sewing, as one would perhaps rid themselves of a child and stands up, and sallies forth to humor him with a greeting. Mix things up a little.

"Hello," she says.

"Hello darling," he answers, clearly surprised by the almost, _almost,_ bright tone in her voice. 

Darling. That was new.

She takes his coat and drapes it on the couch. Then she walks over and mixes the drinks, a strong one for him, a weak one for herself. (Alcohol and babies do not mix, and by God, there will be no second time. She will make sure of that.) Soon Heloise is back again in her chair with the sewing, and he is in the other, opposite, holding the tall glass with both hands, rocking it so the ice cubes tinkle against the side.

For her, this was a tiresome time of day. She knows he doesn’t want to speak much until the first drink is finished, perhaps even after, judging by the pained look on his face. and she, on her side, was perfectly content to sit quietly, completely ignoring his company, despite long hours suffered alone in the house. She hates to stew in the presence of this man. She hates him for the way he sits, loosely in a chair, for the way he opens a door, or moves far too slowly, with hesitating steps across the room. She feels disgusted by the look in his eyes when they rest on her, the funny shape of his mouth, and especially the way he remains queerly silent about his tiredness, sitting still with himself until the whiskey had taken some of it away. Yet she was feeling generous today.

"Tired?" Heloise asks.

"Yes," he says. "I'm tired," And as he speaks, an unusual thing is happening. He lifts his glass and drains it in one swallow although there was still half of it, at least half of it left. She doesn't really watch him, but she knows what he has done. He pauses for a moment, leaning forward in the chair, eyes questioning, and then he gets up and walks over slowly to fetch himself another drink.

"I'll get it." she offers. Stands up.

"Sit down," he answers. Incredulous now.

When he ambles back, she notices that the new drink is dark amber with the large quantity of whiskey in it. Good. The more, the earlier he’ll go to bed.

She watches him carefully as he begins to sip the dark yellow drink, and she can see little oily swirls in the liquid because it was so strong.

"I think it's a shame," she says offhandedly, "that when a merchant gets to be as senior as 

you, clients want him about on his feet all day long."

He doesn't answer. so she bends her head again and carries on with her sewing; but each time he lifts the drink to his lips, she hears a gentle sigh.

"Would you like me to get you some cheese? I haven't made any supper because it's Thursday." Asks this desperately, because he is not being himself. Pompous. Gloating.

"No," he says, eyes meandering. 

She forges on. "It's still not too late. There's plenty of meat and stuff and you can have it right here and not even move out of the chair." Words insinuating he even moves.

Her eyes wait on him for an answer, an acknowledgement, but he makes no sign of the sort.

"Anyway," she went on, "I'll get you some cheese and crackers first."

"I don't want it," he said.

She shifts uneasily in her chair, the large eyes still watching his face. "I'll make it anyway, and then you can have it or not, as you like."

Heloise stands up and places her sewing on the table by the lamp.

"Sit down," he says. "Just for a minute, for God’s sake, sit down.”

It wasn't till then that she began to get frightened.

"Go on," he said. "Sit down."

She lowered herself back slowly into the chair, watching him all the time with those large, bewildered eyes. He has finished the second drink and is staring down into the glass, frowning.

"Listen," he said. "I've got something to tell you."

"What's the matter?"

He had now become absolutely motionless, keeping his head down so that the light from the candle beside him fell across the upper part of his face, leaving the chin and mouth in shadow. She notices a little muscle moving near the corner of his left eye.

"This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, I'm afraid," he says slowly. "But I've thought about it a good deal and I've decided the only thing to do is tell you right away. I hope you won't blame me too much."

And he tells her. It doesn't take long, four or five minutes at most, and she stays very still through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he strays further and further away from her with each word.

"So there it is," he adds. "And I know it's kind of a bad time to be telling you, bet there simply wasn't any other way. Of course someone will lend us money from time to time, and see you're looked after. But there needn't really be any fuss. I hope not anyway. It wouldn't be very good for my reputation."

Her first instinct was not to believe any of it, to reject it all. It occurred to her that perhaps he hadn't even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing. Maybe, if she went about her business and acted as though she hadn't been listening, then later, when she sort of wakes up again, she might find none of it had ever happened.

"I'll get the supper," she manages to say, and this time he doesn’t stop her.

When she walks across the room she can’t feel her feet touching the floor. She can’t feel anything at all- except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit. Everything was automatic now. Down the steps to the cellar, the light switch, the deep freeze, the hand inside the cabinet taking hold of the first object it met. She lifts it out, and looks at it. It’s wrapped in paper, so she takes off the paper and looks at it again.

A leg of lamb.

All right then, they would have lamb for supper. She carries it upstairs, holding the thin bone-end of it with both her hands, and as she passes through the living-room, she sees him standing over by the window with his back to her, and she stops.

"For God's sake," he mumbles, hearing her, but not turning round. "Don't make supper for me. I'm going out."

At that point, Heloise Marino simply walks up behind him and without any pause she swings the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brings it down as hard as she can on the back of his head.

She might just as well have hit him with a steel club.

She steps back a single pace, waiting, and the funny thing is that he remains standing there for at least four or five seconds, like a statue, gently swaying. Then he crashes to the carpet.

The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helps bring Heloise out of her shock. She comes out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stands for a while, blinking at the body, still holding the ridiculous piece of meat tight with both hands.

All right, she tells herself. So I've killed him.

It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She begins thinking very fast. As the wife of a merchant, she knew quite well what the penalty would be. That was fine. It made no difference to her. In fact, it would be a relief. On the other hand, what about the child? What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Do they kill them both, mother and child? Or did they wait until the tenth month? What did they do?

Heloise Marino doesn't know. And she certainly isn't prepared to take a chance.

She carries the meat into the kitchen, places it in a pan, gets a fire roaring in the stove, and shoves it inside. Then she washes her hands and stalks upstairs, to the bedroom. She sits down delicately before the mirror, tidies her hair, touches up her lips and face. She tries a smile. It comes out false and forced. She tries again.

"Hello Marco," she says brightly, aloud. 

The voice sounds peculiar too.

"I want some potatoes please, Marco. Yes, and I think some peas." A hint of indecision.

That was better. Both the smile and the voice were coming out less strained now. She rehearses it eight times more. Then she runs downstairs, took her coat, went out the back door, down the garden, into the street.

It wasn't six o'clock yet and the lamps are already lit in the market, a large prosperous building.

"Hello Marco," she said brightly, smiling at the man behind the counter.

A tip of the hat."Why, good evening, Lady Marino. How're you?"

"I want some potatoes please, Marco. Yes, and I think a can of peas."

The man turns and reaches up behind him on the shelf for the peas.

"Angelo's decided he's tired and doesn't want to eat out tonight," she tells him. "We usually go out, you know, and now he's caught me without any vegetables in the house."

"Then how about meat, Lady Marino?"

"No, I've got meat.” Voice stiffer now. “I have a nice leg of lamb."

"Oh."

"I don’t like cooking it. Marco, but I'm taking a chance on it this time. You think it will be alright?"

"Personally," the shopkeeper says, disinterest apparent in his voice, "I don't believe it makes any difference. You want these potatoes? Fresh as ever."

"Oh yes, that'll be fine. Two of those."

"Anything else?" Marco cocks his head on one side, looking at her pleasantly, but Heloise feels it more to be questioningly. "How about afterwards? What are you going to give him for afterwards?"

"Well-what would you suggest, Marco?" Flourishes towards the shelf.

He glances around his shop. "How about a nice big slice of cheesecake? I know he likes that."

"Perfect," she encourages. "He loves it."

And when it’s all wrapped and she has paid, she puts on her brightest smile and says, "Thank you, Marco. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Lady Marino. And thank you."

And now, she tells herself as she turns back, all she was doing now, she was returning home to her husband and he was waiting for his supper; and she must cook it good, and make it as tasty as possible because the poor man was tired; and if, when she entered the house, she happened to find anything unusual, or tragic, or terrible, then naturally it would be a shock and she'd become frantic with grief and horror. Mind you, she wasn't expecting to find anything. She was just going home with the vegetables. Lady Heloise Marino going home with the vegetables on a fine summer evening to cook supper for her husband.

That's the way, she reassures herself. Do everything right and natural. Keep things absolutely natural and there'll be no need for any acting at all.

Therefore, when Lady Marino enters the kitchen by the back door after murdering her husband, she is humming a little tune to herself and smiling.

"Angelo!" she calls. "Are you home?"

She puts the parcel down on the table and goes through into the drawing room; and when she sees him lying there on the floor with his legs doubled up and one arm twisted back underneath his body, a curious feeling ripples through her. All the years and hardships to endure and pitiful looks to deflect. Quite unsettling.

A few minutes later she gets up and runs to the police, knocks frantically at the door and when the man at the other end answers, she cries to him, "Quick! Come quick! Angelo's dead!"

The man stands there, perfectly still

"You mean Angelo Marino’s dead?"

"I think so," Feigns a sob. "He's lying on the floor and I think he's dead."

"We’ll be right over," the man says.

The carriage arrives very quickly, and when she opens the front door, two policemen march right in. She knows them both, acquaintances of her husband, and she falls right into a chair, lets one man walk past her, then goes over to join the other one, Hugo, kneeling by the body.

"Is he dead?" she cries.

"I'm afraid he is. What happened?"

Briefly, she tells her story about going out to the market and coming back to find him on the floor. The inspector discovers a mark on the dead man's head. He shows it to one of the detectives who gets up at once and makes haste towards the direction of the station.

Soon, other men began to come into the house. First a doctor, then two detectives, one of whom she knows by name. There is a great deal of whispering and muttering beside the corpse, and the detectives keep asking her a lot of questions. But they always treat her gently. She tells her story again, this time right from the beginning, when Angelo had come in, and she was sewing, and he was tired, so tired he hadn't wanted to go out for supper. She told how she'd put the meat in the stove-"it's there now, cooking"- and how she'd slopped out to the market for vegetables, and come back to find him lying on the floor.

Which market?" one of the detectives asked.

She tells him, and he turns and whispers something to the other detective who immediately goes outside, onto the street.

In fifteen minutes he is back with a page of notes. More whispering, and through her sobbing she hears a few of the whispered phrases-"...acted quite normal...very cheerful...wanted to give him a good supper...peas...cheesecake...impossible that she..."

After a while, the doctor departs and two other men come in and take the corpse away on a stretcher. At the end of it all, only two detectives remain, and so do the two policemen. The Inspector asked if she wouldn't rather go somewhere else, to her mother in law’s house perhaps, or to his own wife who would take care of her and put her up for the night.

No, she answers. She didn't feel she could move even a yard at the moment. Would they mind awfully if she stayed just where she was until she felt better. She doesn't feel too good at the moment. Really doesn't.

Then shouldn't she lie down on the bed? The Inspector asks.

No, Heloise says. She'd like to stay right where she is, in this chair. A little later, perhaps, when she feels a little less compromised, she would move.

So they leave her as she is, while they go about their morbid business, searching the house. Occasionally one of the detectives asks Heloise another question. Sometimes the Inspector speaks to her gently as he passes by. Her husband, he tells her, has been killed by a blow on the back of the head administered with a heavy blunt instrument, almost certainly a large piece of metal. They were in the process of finding the offending object. The murderer may have taken it with him, but on the other hand he may have thrown it away or hidden it somewhere on the premises.

"It's the old story," he intones. "Get the weapon, and you've got the man."

Later, one of the detectives comes up and sits beside her, coaxing. Did she know, he asked, of anything in the house that could've been used as the weapon? Would she mind having a look around to see if anything was missing, for example, a heavy metal vase.

They didn't have any heavy metal vases, she said.

"Or a big wrench?"

She didn't think they had a big wrench. But there might be something like that in the attic.

The search went on. She knew that there were other policemen in the garden all around the house. She could hear their footsteps on the gravel outside, and sometimes she saw a flash of a torch through a chink in the curtains. It began to get late, nearly nine she noticed by the clock on the mantle. The four men searching the rooms seemed to be growing weary, a trifle exasperated.

"Inspector" she calls, "Would you mind giving me a drink?"

"Sure I'll give you a drink. You mean this brandy?"

"Water.” Heloise amends. “But just a small glass. It might make me feel better."

He hands her the water.

"Why don't you have one yourself," she implores. "You must be awfully tired. Please do. You've been very good to me."

"Well," he answers. "It's not strictly allowed, but I might take just a drop to keep me going."

One by one the others come in and are presently persuaded to take a little nip of whiskey. They stand around rather awkwardly with the drinks in their hands, uncomfortable in her presence, trying to say consoling things to her. A policeman wanders into the kitchen, wanders out quickly and says, "Look, Lady Marino. You know that stove of yours is still on, and the meat still inside."

"Oh dear me!" she cries. "So it is!"

"I better snuff it out for you, hadn't I?"

"Please. Thank you so much."

When the policeman returns for the second time, she makes a point to look at him with tearful eyes. "Inspector," she says.

"Yes?"

"Would you do me a small favor, you and these others?"

"We can try, Lady Marino."

"Well," she begins. "Here you all are, some of you good friends of dear Angelo's too, and helping to catch the man who killed him. You must be fearfully hungry by now because it's long past your suppertime, and I know Angelo would never forgive me, God bless his soul, if I allowed you to remain in his house without offering you decent hospitality. Why don't you eat up that lamb that's in the stove. It'll be cooked just right by now."

"Wouldn't dream of it," the Inspector says.

"Please," she begs. "Please eat it. Personally I couldn't touch a thing, certainly not what's been in the house when he was here.” Eyes threatening hysterics. “But it's all right for you. It'd be a favor to me if you'd eat it up. Then you can go on with your work again afterwards."

There is a good deal of hesitating among the four policemen, and excuses are offered, but they are clearly hungry, and in the end they are cajoled into going into the kitchen and helping themselves. Heloise stays where she is, listening to them speaking among themselves, their voices thick and sloppy because their mouths are full of meat.

"Have some more, Hugo?"

"No. Better not finish it."

"She wants us to finish it. She said so. We’re doing her a favor."

"Okay then. Give me some more."

"That's the hell of a big club the culprit must've used to hit poor Angelo," one of them is saying. "The doctor says his skull was smashed all to pieces just like from a hammer."

"That's precisely why it ought to be easy to find."

"Exactly what I say."

"Whoever has done it, they're not going to be carrying a thing like that around with them longer than they need."

One of them burps.

"Personally, I think it's right here on the premises."

"Probably right under our very noses. What you think, Antonio?"

And in the other room, Heloise Marino begins to laugh.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> So I know this is darker then your average poalof fic, but throughout history, wives of noblemen would kill their husbands for sometimes hiring hitmen, for cheating, abusive behavior, forcing them to have a baby, or in this story's case, gambling. Really, there are books on Amazon that trace the methods of such incidents.
> 
> Either way, I hope you found this little piece interesting!


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